Photo: GMC
It’s no secret that once they make it into this world, cars have a tendency to stick around, even after official production ceased. Depending on a number of factors, a car can survive decades and sell for big bucks even long after the carmaker gave up on it.
That’s how the pre-owned, custom, and collector markets were born. They thrive on nostalgia and people’s love for long-dead things.
Over the years, we’ve seen dead car nameplates that manage to stir such passion people often pay fortunes to get their hands on. In this category we’ve got the usual suspects, like Plymouth, Pontiac, or Mercury, but there are people who also like and miss brands such as Oldsmobile, DeLorean, or Hummer.
And until now, we had no idea how many people are in each boat.
Luckily, Google’s got us covered. This God of all readily-available information makes no secret of knowing who is searching what and where (the jury is still out on the why), and all you need to do is look deep and become wiser.
And look they did, our friends from Australian insurance company Budget Direct, in a bid to reveal what dead cars are the most searched for in the U.S. And boy, are we in for some surprises.
To address the elephant in the room first, the brands subject to this Google Search data survey are the ones that were still around after 1950, and the results below were compiled on data collected in October 2020. The results were published this January.
According to the findings, the most popular dead car was the Pontiac Firebird, with 110,000 searches. Then comes, in a distant second, the Pontiac GTO. The first surprise comes in the third position: it’s the Hummer H1, with 81,000 searches. And then, the bomb drops: Hummer H3 comes next, with 80,000 searches, and right after that, the Hummer H2, with 79,000 searches.
Overall, Hummer was the most Google-searched dead car brand, ahead of Pontiac, Plymouth, or AC Cobra. An official explanation for this does not exist, but some of you might remember it was in October of last year when GM showed for the first time the electric GMC Hummer, so there’s that...
Over the years, we’ve seen dead car nameplates that manage to stir such passion people often pay fortunes to get their hands on. In this category we’ve got the usual suspects, like Plymouth, Pontiac, or Mercury, but there are people who also like and miss brands such as Oldsmobile, DeLorean, or Hummer.
And until now, we had no idea how many people are in each boat.
Luckily, Google’s got us covered. This God of all readily-available information makes no secret of knowing who is searching what and where (the jury is still out on the why), and all you need to do is look deep and become wiser.
And look they did, our friends from Australian insurance company Budget Direct, in a bid to reveal what dead cars are the most searched for in the U.S. And boy, are we in for some surprises.
To address the elephant in the room first, the brands subject to this Google Search data survey are the ones that were still around after 1950, and the results below were compiled on data collected in October 2020. The results were published this January.
According to the findings, the most popular dead car was the Pontiac Firebird, with 110,000 searches. Then comes, in a distant second, the Pontiac GTO. The first surprise comes in the third position: it’s the Hummer H1, with 81,000 searches. And then, the bomb drops: Hummer H3 comes next, with 80,000 searches, and right after that, the Hummer H2, with 79,000 searches.
Overall, Hummer was the most Google-searched dead car brand, ahead of Pontiac, Plymouth, or AC Cobra. An official explanation for this does not exist, but some of you might remember it was in October of last year when GM showed for the first time the electric GMC Hummer, so there’s that...
Google News